1. + Empathy and Friendship A Community Engagement Plan Abigail Koski, Camille Juarez, Madelene Opar, and Morgan Beck

2. Overview This community engagement plan aims to target children and young adults, teaching them what empathy is and why it is important to have. This community engagement plan also highlights the effects of cyberbullying and how feminism can be used to fight this form of bullying.

3. What is Empathy? Empathy is defined as being able to understand what someone else is feeling. It is the ability to pick up on body language and facial cues, and know when someone is lying when they say, “I’m fine.” When you talk with someone online, you lack the critical facial clues to see how they are truly reacting to something. Teaching children and young adults to foster empathy for those that are different from them can break down biases and blossom into friendships rather than bullying.

4. How Does Bully Portray Empathy? In the documentary Bully, adults used their activism to promote empathetic feelings among other parents and students. If kids were made more aware of the ways bullying can hurt beyond what we can physically see, they can start thinking about bullying differently and realize their personal responsibilities to help stop it. Parents and students sharing their stories are integral to the spread of empathetic awareness.

5. Bully The film Bully demonstrated how powerful empathy can be when it comes to bullying. One of the boys in the film mentioned how he used to bully kids until he realized how bad it made them feel. In the bonus material of Bully, there was a follow up on how the documentary had impacted Alex’s life. When kids saw that he was just like any other boy and how the bullying really affected him, they began to talk to him more and treat him better. Bully put people in his shoes and showed them what he was going through on a daily basis.

6. Cyberbullying Bullying via social media generally occurs based on socially constructed ideas of right and wrong. Individuals who do not have the “ideal” body or don’t fit the “ideal” social class or race are bullied for their differences. Cyberbullying presents a particularly difficult problem for adolescents because the internet is so readily available and the anonymity that it provides makes stopping this problem very challenging.

7. How Can We Be Empathetic Online? Putting people in someone else’s shoes speaks to how powerful empathy can be when it comes to bullying. Empathy is much harder to push when it comes to cyberbullying, but if programs could be put in place to educate children and foster empathy even this type of bullying could decrease.

8. Body Negativity Young children and teens are flooded with ideas of how their body should be and what it means to be man or women. These body standards are affecting children severely, about 1/3 of boys and ½ of girls ages 6-8 feel that they should be thinner (missrepresentation). This media portrayal of the ideal body can lead not only to individuals feeling bad about the body they have, but to some it can justify the bullying of others’ body types.

9. These statistics highlight exactly how much we as members of society are affected by representation in the media of different body types. If there is more diversity than the standard thin white woman, kids will start to feel better about themselves.

10. Body Negativity Continued Not only is this type of bullying harmful to an individual’s psychological health, but it can lead to eating disorders, severely harming an individual’s physical health and possibly leading to death (eatingdisorderhope).

11. Cultural Fabrications of the Body "Body images are always cultural fabrications, yet we are encouraged to take them for granted as if they were natural" (Cavallaro 20). We as members of a society are expected to believe what we see. For girls, we are expected to believe that being dangerously thin with a thigh gap is the only way people will like us.

12. These two advertisements about being “beach ready” from the 1950’s and today illustrate the different definitions of beauty over time.

13. How Do We Mold Ourselves to Fit In? For an eternity women have been told how to look, how to dress, and how to act. We are expected to wear makeup because if we don't society will shun us. In America, women are expected to shave so that we might appeal to men. Girls have been taught that having long hair is far better than short, otherwise we might be mistaken for a man.

14. What About Body Positivity? There is an online movement geared towards the acceptance of all body types called the Body Positivity Movement. This social media presence of this movement is immense and has caused companies to reevaluate the way they market their products. The body positivity movement has lead to a community of empowered individuals and challenges the standard of what a body “should” look like.

15. Why is the Body Positivity Movement Important? This movement does not merely focus on individuals of different sizes, this extends to all genders, ages, and races, and encompasses individuals with physical disabilities as well. Through raising awareness and sharing stories of the impact that bullying and societal standards of beauty can have on an individual, this movement has helped foster empathy in both internet users and retail companies.

16. The Importance of Body Positivity Continued Showing children and young adults that the concepts of right and wrong, beautiful and ugly are socially constructed and change overtime will help them realize that they don’t have to accept these ideas. Making individuals aware of differences and breaking down social constructs via these social media platforms can shed a light on the impact of cyberbullying and foster empathy in individuals Developing empathy can allow people to ignore social constructs and develop friendships across differences.

17. Is Being Different Really That Bad? Standards are set for what strong, powerful, and normal people should look like and how they should act. If someone doesn’t possess these traits they are treated unfairly. The children that are bullied are targeted because they are different and don’t fit what is considered normal. Empathy and these differences are related because if there were no differences in the world, there would be no need to empathize with others.

18. Empathy and Friendship Friendship is linked to empathy in that a friend is someone you get to know well, you can begin to understand what they are thinking and feeling and you are able to be more empathetic towards them. Building strong friendships helps teach and foster empathy. We can foster friendships across differences by having empathy for the other person. It is understanding differences and generating empathy for an individual that allows friendships to bloom despite differences.

19. How Can We Help Decrease Bullying? Children are impressionable. If we begin to teach them at an early stage what happens when you bully someone and what consequences there will be, it will stick with them for many many years. We must begin to stress the importance of fostering empathy and teach children and young adults that it is okay to be different.

20. It Takes a Village to Stop a Bully We have to start looking out for each other. If we don’t, the problem will only get worse. Bullying and body shaming are two serious factors when it comes to self-harm. The media has an extreme influence on society. Don’t believe everything you see, because chances are, it isn’t real. Through feminism we can fight socially constructed ideals that harm women and men alike.

21. Works Cited Bully. Hirsch L. The Weinstein Company. 2011 Daniels J. Ph.D Cyber Racism on College Campuses. May 25, 2011. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jessie- daniels/cyber-racism-on-college-c_b_562752.html Hinduja S. and Patchin J., Cyberbullying: Identification, Prevention, & Response. October 2014 Newsom, J. S., Scully, R. K., Dreyfous, G. W., Johnson, S. E., Congdon, J., Holland, E., Cvetko, S., Ro*Co Films Educational (Firm). (2011). Miss representation. Sausalito, Calif.: Ro*co Films Educational. Ospina M. What is the Body Positive Movement? December 25, 2015. http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/12/what-is- body-positvity/ Wandler K. MD, Bullying and Body Image.